Bela Kun

Bela Kun (20 February 1886-29 August 1938) was the de facto leader of the Hungarian Soviet Republic as People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs from 21 March to 1 August 1919, succeeding Ferenc Harrer and preceding Peter Agoston.

Biography
Bela Kohn was born in Szilagycseh, Transylvania, Austria-Hungary (now Cehu Silvaniei, Romania) on 20 February 1886 to a Jewish father and a Protestant mother. He graduated as a lawyer from Koloszvar before serving in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I, in which he was captured by the Russians. While he was a prisoner of war, he became a communist, and he returned to Hungary to build up a a communist party which gained increasing support as it promised all things to all people in a country suffering from severe economic and national dislocation. He replaced Mihaly Karolyi in March 1919 on a wave of nationalist outrage at the Romanian occupation of Transylvania. This proved part of his eventual downfall; as he exhausted Hungarian troops in an effort to regain territory occupied by Czechoslovakia and Romania, he was unable to accept any peace which involved a compromise on formerly Hungarian territory. Domestically, he managed to offend virtually all sections of the society in his reforming zeal: the Catholic Church and the agrarian population through his destruction of traditional customs (such as the transformation of churches into cinemas and nationalization without redistribution of land), as well as urban workers and the bourgeoisie, through inflation and continued war. His regime collapsed on 2 August 1919 below the weight of the Nationalist Army under Miklos Horthy], and the Romanians, who entered Budapest on 4 August 1919. His regime had allowed the coordination of the nationalist right, which then controlled the country for 25 years. The Jewish descent of Kun and many other leaders of his regime also added fuel to the already growing [[anti-Semitism of the country. Kun himself fled first to Vienna and then to Moscow, where he became President of Comintern. In 1938, he became a victim of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, and he was executed at a gulag in August of that year.